Did you Get Lost in the Garden?

The weather has turn hot and humid, of course this is normal for summers in Tennessee.  We are blessed with a very long growing season but our summers can be extremely warm.  Last year on a record setting June day we reached over 110 degrees.  Which also happened to be the day our air conditioner decided to quit!  We spent…

The colors are out and some trees are spectacular! There are all sorts of colorful trees for the fall that just can’t be beat. The maples are some of my favorites. Here are some suggestions for trees with great fall color:Maples: Sugar Maple (Acer Saccharum): beautiful yellow orange foliageRed Maple (Acer rubrum) red foliage (of course)Japanese Maples (Acer Palmatum).Sweet Gum…

Several weeks ago I wrote a post about one of my favorite shrubs, the Japanese Dappled Willow ‘Hakuro Nishiki’ (Salix integra). It’s a fast growing variegated willow that works well as a privacy screen and is hardy in zones 4-9. It’s deciduous so it will be bare over the winter but the new growth in the spring time is fun…

Fall vegetable gardening can certainly be interesting in Tennessee!  You never quite know how the weather is going to shape up.  Is it going to frost early?  Late?  Will the temperatures be normal or extra warm like we’ll be having this week?  You just never know.  For gardening weather this October we’ve had a couple light frosts but nothing damaging…

Early last year I put together a rain garden in our yard to absorb some of the driveway drainage. Here are a few pictures of how it looks now! Inside the garden we have a variety of perennials that are generally carefree and tolerate a wide range of growing conditions. Plants like coneflowers. Echinacea purpurea is having a perfect year…

It isn’t often I have a product to test in my garden where I actually say “Holy crap, this is awesome!” when no one else is around. Really. Products that good are really hard to come by because I’m fairly picky. A few weeks ago I was sent two items from Fiskars to try out. For disclaimer purposes I was…

I hope you’ll forgive this little divergence from the garden talk to brag on my oldest little girl. She just turned 4 today and here’s how we spent our time after dinner: Groovy Baby! And now for the ice cream shots! Yum!

This year I decided to make a salad, or rather a salad green bed! This is one of the 3’x4′ beds in our raised bed vegetable garden. I decided to section it off into four smaller squares rather than plant in rows. I prefer to sprinkle the seed for lettuce and spinach instead of placing each seed (I think it…

One of the reasons so many people enjoy gardening as a hobby is to attract wildlife. All sorts of wildlife can enjoy you gardening from the butterflies and bees to the deer, but few kinds of wildlife are easier to attract than the birds. One of our most frequent fliers is the tufted titmouse (Baeolophus bicolor).This mouse gray bird with…

As autumn’s colors have wrapped us in a cloth of color we have peeked into the foliage around the gardening blogosphere. Participants from Canada to Florida and Illinois to England have offered up wonderful illustrations of fall’s foremost feature. It’s time to take a look back and see where all that fall color came from and where it went! I’ve…

All this rain has put me behind on planting in the garden. The tomatoes and peppers are doing good but there is more to the garden than tomatoes and peppers! Hopefully this week I’ll get a chance to accomplish a few of these things: Plant my succession crops of beans, corn, squash and zucchini. Build a better trellis for my…

The other day I wrote a post about protecting your plants from a freeze. I followed what I preached and came through with no frost damage on my covered plants. I think Tennessee is now officially in the clear! I came away with these interesting shots. A new kind of pot garden?

The gardening adventure is full of ups and downs. Of excitement and disappointments, of frustration and elation. It wouldn’t be exciting any other way I suppose but those low periods sure can be low. Take for instance the deer infultration this week. The vegetable garden is my main concern – I want to eat food from this garden – it…

Once all your prep work has been thoroughly completed gather up all your lists and get ready to design the plan for your edible landscape. When making an edible landscape plan it is important to keep all of your end goals in mind along with the time it will take to reach those goals. Purple Podded Pole Beans Time as…

Last week I put together another downspout dry creek bed to help escort the water away from the house foundation. We don’t really have any issues with too much moisture around the house but it’s better to think preemptively and solve those dilemmas before problems arise. Besides this is such an easy project to do that it can be started…

The other day I came up with an idea for a rustic planter. I had this piece of a pallet left over from my old potting bench that I didn’t have any particular use for. The old pallet itself was the table potion of my previous potting bench and I cut off a piece of the pallet to make the…

I don’t know about you but I’m ready for spring. Notice I said spring not spring gardening. I haven’t done everything I need to do to get ready for the new gardening season but I’m already lamenting the cold temperatures that we are destined to have for the next two months (January and February). When March comes we usually have…

One of the tasks I accomplished last week on the greenhouse garden shed was to complete most of the siding on the backside. It was a complicated task due to many little cuts and some creative problem solving that was involved. One of the issues was with the “secret door.” I wanted the backdoor where my mower will enter the…